The Washington Post is lamenting over the income disparity in Washington DC. Of course, it is all Bush's fault.

A study to be released today by the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute said the top 20 percent of the city's households have 31 times the average income of the 20 percent at the bottom. The gap in the District is fed by extremes at both ends: The poor have less average income than in most of the country's 40 biggest cities, and the rich have more.

The persistent gap between rich and poor has been fueling debate over whether the national economic recovery is helping all Americans. The study deepens the picture of an increasingly fractured city, where poverty and wealth both grew in the last decade. The average household income for the top group was $186,830, and the average income for the poorest group was $6,126.

"The rich got richer and the poor didn't get richer," said Stephen Fuller, a regional economist at George Mason University in Fairfax. "The poor can't afford to get out of Washington to the suburbs. . . . Our wealthy class got wealthier in the 1990s, and it didn't trickle down to the bottom."

When are these people going to realize that the government doesn't make people "rich" or "poor"? The "rich" keep doing the things that make them "rich" while the "poor" keep doing the things that make them "poor". Meanwhile the politicians keep giving poor people welfare handouts (in the form of refundable "tax credits") in exchange for votes, all the while socking it to them with regressive and predatory policies. Between increasing Metro fares, the predatory marketing of lottery tickets (which are shamelessly aimed directly at the "working poor"), higher cigarette and alcohol taxes, and now a sudden interest in slot machine gambling, is it any wonder that the "poor" are always broke? And as long as they are always broke, they'll continue to look toward the government and politicians for answers. Which is the whole idea. He who steals from Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

Lets face it, no one has more of a vested interest in keeping the poor, poor, than the liberal Democrats who continue to give them government handouts in exchange for unwavering support at the ballot box.